Artifact 4

The following essay is a journal in which I compare the inaugural poems of Amanda Gorman and Maya Angelou. I discuss the differences between the poems and how they made me feel, and conclude that I preferred one of the pieces over the other. I chose this to fulfill an objective from Week 10 on the syllabus: to respond critically by analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating texts.

Maya Angelou and Amanda Gorman's poems both have optimism about the future despite the country's dark past. They both have a tone of "even though things were bad before, we can turn over a new leaf today and do better in the future." This leads me to believe that an inaugural speech is supposed to be uplifting and encouraging and at the same time a call to action. It is an acknowledgment that there is still much work to be done, and allows people to visualize the positive changes that will (presumably) be in effect with the incoming president. Angelou's poem spoke to me much more than Gorman's. I am not completely sure of the reason why, but it may be because Gorman's poem was a bit too straightforward and optimistic for me. I appreciated that Angelou's poem still called for unity and togetherness, but it also was very clear about the violence that was done to people in the past. I liked that Angelou's poem had imagery that allows people to dissect the meaning for many years to come. It felt more layered than Gorman's, which to me felt like it was so obvious that I never had to use a lot of brainpower to decipher the meaning. What I do love about Gorman's, though, is that hers seems as if it was meant to be more accessible to a general audience. I can always appreciate a speaker who knows how to be accessible without being condescending, and I believe Gorman did a good job with that. While I like both poems and their idealism, I just appreciate the way that Angelou's made me think and visualize.